call to revolt

[J. Horsmeier]

In article <1991Jun28.040420.28730 at tkou02.enet.dec.com> diamond at jit533.enet@tkou02.enet.dec.com (Norman Diamond) writes:
>In article <998 at baby.and.nl> jos at and.nl (J. Horsmeier) writes:
>>And I won't die either ...
>
>Glad to hear it.
>
[My silly stuff here ...]
>
>OK, you asked for non-portability, you got non-portability, and you say
>you wanted to get non-portability.  So why are you complaining here?
>Your code works on your old compiler, and either it won't port to your
>new ANSI-conformant compiler or else it will port with a diagnostic
>message.  You got your non-portability.
>--

Hi, please let's stop this silly discussion. Once and for all, I am *not*
complaining. Someone made the assumption of the ANSI C comittee forbidding
lvalue casts, and started a `call to revolt'. I replied, 'cause I liked the
subject. Ripping non-portable `features' out of a language is not doing any
good to that language. Warning people and making them aware of these non-
portable, dirty ga-ga's *is* doing some good to a language (like X3J11 does). 
But, if (and only if) portability is not a concern (like in my current
situation, I hope it'll change soon), why not stick ints into pointers with
a quick hack? Who cares? I know, char p; *((double*)&p)= 1.2345; could, and
probably will, kill your program. I know, I know, it's all ever so simple. 
I know of hundreds of different situations that are *not* portable or just
made possible by a flaw in the compiler, or have only rights to exist on 
zomby machines. And most of the time I don't use them!
But, for all sake, don't amputate them from a language (which was the original
assumption). Just advice people not to use them, and if they still want to:

		They get what they deserve!

Good for them. On the other hand, if you know what you're doing, 
who is entitled to forbid you from doing so? But anyhow, this became a 
thread already, let's stop it and talk about nicer things. 
This is moving from nowhere into la la land.

See ya! 8^)

Jos


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